Project Boomerang

domingo, 21 de julho de 2013

Today was the final day of this adventurous one-week game jam. We used our final day to try and polish the prototype a bit so that it is pleasant to observe, hear and play. We added a final batch of textures and awesome sounds. We also revised the GUI to be a bit less textual.
In retrospective, we used the experience gained from our previous (yet to finish) project, in terms of planning, Unity development and game development in general, to make the best of this jam.
We've learned a lot of things this week including how to assemble a side scroller, how to make its aesthetics work in a nice way (although you'll be the judge on that), how to create a level (it is a lot harder than it looks, and ours is just a sketch) and we increased our knowledge base with unity's quirks.
Of course, being a week jam, there were some things that had to be left behind: animations, the camera, better normal maps, a more appealing GUI, textures to some of the objects and, of course, no game is complete without a main menu :p (joking).

For all the readers who were with us since day one, I leave you with a treat: the final piece of artwork made for this game.

Here is the final build, i hope you enjoyed this "watching" this game jam and don't forget to like Titan Forged Games on Facebook if you already haven't. BUILD.

sábado, 20 de julho de 2013

Powerups, trap doors, shark-frogs popping out at you. The red dots will enable you to slingshot one more time in the air, opening up new venues for navigation. Just watch out for those spikes, since we couldn't think of any more original of an interaction for them other than they kill you. Which they do.
There's a dude chilling out at the end of hard-to reach platform out there. Don't worry about him. He's just chilling.

All this and more you can find in the current version of our build, which you can try out below.

sexta-feira, 19 de julho de 2013

So today we made the level's prototype. The creative process was "simple": we started by listing all of the objects we wanted to put in the level (platforms, powerups, obstacles, etc), and how slinki can surpass them with his abilities. Then came the hardest part... the level sketching process to include most, if not all, of the elements we thought of. We kept in mind to make the challenges increasingly difficult as the level progresses.

Here's the sketch of what we came up with:

It looks better in the game :D

And last but not least, here's the build for today. Keep in mind that it may be laggy due to lots of models (we will remove them tomorrow). Also some of the background textures my be misaligned.

quinta-feira, 18 de julho de 2013

So today we scratched our heads...and started to add some better bump maps and some new textures in order to make the game look prettier. And it does. It DOES look prettier. We've also finished the enemy concept we mentioned a few days ago, and we are proud to present our good friend and loving father....THE SHORG:

Shorg likes to chill out in the forest's underbrush and leap out at unsuspecting bunnies and eat them (he is part shark after all). If he is not immediately dissuaded, he'll hang back for a bit, but like a creepy stalker, he'll creepily stalk you and do it all over again.

He's not an endangered species so don't be afraid to rough him up a little bit. Just make sure he doesn't start crying or you'll know you've gone too far.
Tomorrow we hope to add him to the game in all his shorgy glory.

quarta-feira, 17 de julho de 2013

Got done texturing the platforms. Still need to UV them right, so they don't stretch. Background works with 3 texture layers, slightly apart from each other, so you get depth. There's a middle-ground layer that's still in it's early stages, but will have more to show for it soon.

The character model is still primitive, but should give a decent enough idea of what he looks like.

As a treat, this is the environment concept made to create the whole,well..., environment of the game:

We also added a health system for both enemies and Slinki. We used an old school mechanic meaning that when a character is hit, it flashes and recoils for a few seconds. Unfortunately, Sliki doesn't recoil at the moment :(.

terça-feira, 16 de julho de 2013

So we implemented the slingshot and rebound mechanics (Slinki can now fling himself to new glorious heights/lengths - it even made us waste time while playing with them), finished up with slinki's controls (sort of) and started experimenting with textures. We also started making a surprise enemy concept (stay tuned).